Lesson 1: You are a part of the universe, the universe is a part of you - Yumi Sakugawa

With comics, it’s always this interesting tug of war between what you can convey with words that can’t be conveyed with just image, and what you can convey with image that words can’t do justice to. So it’s always a combination of both when I come up with the stories because the two things are inseparable to me.

when we realize and truly embrace everything the is within us...that is when we can truly feel healed and whole again

A lot of people ask me — I get this all the time — 'Are you Buddhist? Are you Zen?' And my answer is always, 'I don't always necessarily identify myself with Buddhism, but the philosophy is something I'm always interested in and am very curious about learning more about.' So I am very influenced by Buddhist philosophies, Buddhist schools of thought. So much of it deals with being mindful, being fully aware of just a very subjective nature of reality, the illusion of reality, sort of the dichotomy of samsara or nirvana ... those are things that I do think about a lot, and I think it definitely, that interest reflects itself in the comics. (2014)